Widely condemned for its brutality,[3][4] including violence deployed against peasants, trade union organizers, popularly elected officials and the general civilian population,[5] the Shining Path is classified by the Peruvian government, the U.S., the European Union, and Canada as a terrorist organization.[6][7][8]

Since the capture of its leader Abimael Guzmán in 1992, the Shining Path has declined in activity.[9] Certain factions of the Shining Path now claim to fight in order to force the government to reach a peace treaty with the rebels. Similar to militant groups in Colombia, some factions of the Shining Path have functioned as a highly efficient cocaine-smuggling operation, with an ostensibly paternalistic relationship to villagers.[10]

The common name of this group, Shining Path, distinguishes it from several other Peruvian communist parties with similar names (see Communism in Peru). The name is derived from a maxim of José Carlos Mariátegui, founder of the original Peruvian Communist Party in the 1920s: "El Marxismo-Leninismo abrirá el sendero luminoso hacia la revolución" ("Marxism–Leninism will open the shining path to revolution").[3]

This maxim was featured in the masthead of the newspaper of a Shining Path front group. Peruvian communist groups are often distinguished by the names of their publications.[citation needed] The followers of this group are generally called senderistas. All documents, periodicals and other materials produced by the organization are signed by the Communist Party of Peru (PCP). Academics often refer to them as PCP-SL.

Beginning on March 17, 1980, the Shining Path held a series of clandestine meetings in Ayacucho, known as the Central Committee's second plenary.[12] It formed a "Revolutionary Directorate" that was political and military in nature, and ordered its militias to transfer to strategic areas in the provinces to start the "armed struggle", despite the revisionism instituted in China by Deng Xiaoping and its economic success since 1978. The group also held its "First Military School" where members were instructed in military tactics and in the use of weapons, without any economic, moral or scientific consideration. They also engaged in "Criticism and Self-criticism", a Maoist practice intended to purge bad habits and to avoid the repetition of mistakes, but the indiscriminate killings were their first mistakes, which caused the population's fear but not their support (Lucanamarca). During the existence of the First Military School, members of the Central Committee came under heavy criticism. Guzmán did not, and he emerged from the First Military School as the clear leader of the Shining Path.[13]

When Peru's military government allowed elections for the first time in a dozen years in 1980, the Shining Path was one of the few leftist political groups that declined to take part. It chose to begin guerrilla war in the highlands of Ayacucho Region. On May 17, 1980, on the eve of the presidential elections, it burned ballot boxes in the town of Chuschi. It was the first "act of war" by the Shining Path. The perpetrators were quickly caught and additional ballots were shipped to Chuschi. The elections proceeded without further problems, and the incident received little attention in the Peruvian press.[14]

Indigenous peasants were the main victims of the Shining Path during Peru's internal conflict.

Throughout the 1980s, the Shining Path grew, both in terms of the territory it controlled, and in the number of militants in its organization, particularly in the Andean highlands. It gained support from local peasants by filling the political void left by the central government and providing "popular justice". This caused the peasantry of many Peruvian villages to express some sympathy for the Shining Path, especially in the impoverished and neglected regions of Ayacucho, Apurímac, and Huancavelica. At times, the civilian population of small, neglected towns participated in popular trials, especially when the victims of the trials were widely disliked.[15]

Poster of Abimael Guzmán celebrating five years of war

The Shining Path's credibility was helped by the government's initially tepid response to the insurgency. For over a year, the government refused to declare a state of emergency in the region where the Shining Path was operating. The Interior Minister, José María de la Jara, believed the group could be easily defeated through police actions.[16] Additionally, the president, Fernando Belaúnde Terry, who returned to power in 1980, was reluctant to cede authority to the armed forces, as his first government had ended in a military coup. The result was that the peasants in the areas where the Shining Path was active thought the state was either impotent or not interested in their issues.[citation needed]

On December 29, 1981, the government declared an "emergency zone" in the three Andean regions of Ayacucho, Huancavelica and Apurímac, and granted the military the power to arbitrarily detain any suspicious person. The military abused this power, arresting scores of innocent people, at times subjecting them to torture during interrogation[17] and rape.[18] Police, military forces, and members of the Popular Guerrilla Army (Ejército Guerrillero Popular, or EGP) carried out several massacres throughout the conflict.[citation needed] Military personnel took to wearing black ski-masks to hide their identities and protect their safety, and that of their families. The masks were intimidating, however, and also hid the identities of military personnel as they committed crimes.[citation needed]

In some areas, the military trained peasants and organized them into anti-rebel militias, called "rondas". They were generally poorly-equipped, despite being provided arms by the state. The rondas attacked the Shining Path guerrillas. The first such reported attack was in January 1983, near Huata, when "ronderos" killed 13 "senderistas" in February, in Sacsamarca. In March 1983, ronderos brutally killed Olegario Curitomay, one of the commanders of the town of Lucanamarca. They took him to the town square, stoned him, stabbed him, set him on fire, and finally shot him.[19]

In an April response, the Shining Path entered the province of Huanca Sancos and the towns of Yanaccollpa, Ataccara, Llacchua, Muylacruz and Lucanamarca, where they killed 69 people, in what became known as the Lucanamarca massacre. This was the first time the Shining Path massacred peasants. Similar events followed, such as the ones in Hauyllo, Tambo District. The guerrillas killed 47 peasants, including 14 children aged four to fifteen.[20] Additional massacres by the Shining Path occurred, such as the one in Marcas on August 29, 1985.[21][22]

Areas where the Shining Path was active in Peru

The Shining Path's attacks were not limited to the countryside. It mounted attacks against the infrastructure in Lima, killing civilians in the process. In 1983, it sabotaged several electrical transmission towers, causing a citywide blackout, and set fire and destroyed the Bayer industrial plant. That same year, it set off a powerful bomb in the offices of the governing party, Popular Action. Escalating its activities in Lima, in June 1985 it blew up electricity transmission towers in Lima, producing a blackout, and detonated car bombs near the government palace and the justice palace. It was believed to be responsible for bombing a shopping mall.[23] At the time, President Fernando Belaúnde Terry was receiving the Argentine president Raúl Alfonsín. In one of its last attacks in Lima, on July 16, 1992, the group detonated a powerful bomb on Tarata Street in the Miraflores District, full of civilian people, adults and children,[24] killing 25 people and injuring an additional 155.[25]

During this period, the Shining Path assassinated specific individuals, notably leaders of other leftist groups, local political parties, labor unions, and peasant organizations, some of whom were anti-Shining Path Marxists.[5] On April 24, 1985, in the midst of presidential elections, it tried to assassinate Domingo García Rada, the president of the Peruvian National Electoral Council, severely injuring him and mortally wounding his driver. In 1988, Constantin Gregory, an American citizen working for the United States Agency for International Development, was assassinated. Two French aid workers were killed on December 4 that same year.[26] In August 1991, the group killed one Italian and two Polish priests in the Ancash Region.[27] The following February, it assassinated María Elena Moyano, a well-known community organizer in Villa El Salvador, a vast shantytown in Lima.[28]

By 1991, the Shining Path had control of much of the countryside of the center and south of Peru and had a large presence in the outskirts of Lima. As the organization grew in power, a cult of personality grew around Guzmán. The official ideology of the Shining Path ceased to be "Marxism–Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought", and was instead referred to as "Marxism–Leninism–Maoism-Gonzalo thought:.[29] The Shining Path fought against Peru's other major guerrilla group, the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. (MRTA)[30] as well as campesino self-defense groups organized by the Peruvian armed forces.

Although the reliability of reports regarding the Shining Path's atrocities remains a matter of controversy in Peru for some people, the organization's use of violence is well documented. Lisa North, an expert on Peru at York University, noted that "the assassinations they carried out were absolutely ruthless . . . It was so extremist – absolutely, totally doctrinaire and absolutely, totally ruthless in pursuit of its aims."[31] Furthermore, the Shining Path brutally killed its victims and rejected the idea of human rights. A Shining Path document stated:

We start by not ascribing to either the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Costa Rica [Convention on Human Rights], but we have used their legal devices to unmask and denounce the old Peruvian state. . . . For us, human rights are contradictory to the rights of the people, because we base rights in man as a social product, not man as an abstract with innate rights. "Human rights" do not exist except for the bourgeois man, a position that was at the forefront of feudalism, like liberty, equality, and fraternity were advanced for the bourgeoisie of the past. But today, since the appearance of the proletariat as an organized class in the Communist Party, with the experience of triumphant revolutions, with the construction of socialism, new democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat, it has been proven that human rights serve the oppressor class and the exploiters who run the imperialist and landowner-bureaucratic states. Bourgeois states in general... Our position is very clear. We reject and condemn human rights because they are bourgeois, reactionary, counterrevolutionary rights, and are today a weapon of revisionists and imperialists, principally Yankee imperialists.

While the Shining Path quickly seized control of large areas of Peru, it soon faced serious problems. The Shining Path's Maoism never had the support of the majority of the Peruvian people; according to opinion polls, only 15% of the population considered subversion to be justifiable in June 1988, while only 17% considered it justifiable in 1991.[33] In June 1991, "the total sample disapproved of the Shining Path by an 83 to 7 percent margin, with 10 percent not answering the question. Among the poorest, however, only 58% stated disapproval of the Shining Path; 11 percent said they had a favorable opinion of the Shining Path, and some 31 percent would not answer the question."[34] A September 1991 poll found that 21 percent of those polled in Lima believed that the Shining Path did not kill and torture innocent people. The same poll found that 13% believed that society would be more just if the Shining Path won the war and 22% believed society would be equally just under the Shining Path as it was under the government.[34]

Many peasants were unhappy with the Shining Path's rule for a variety of reasons, such as its disrespect for indigenous culture and institutions,[35] and the brutality of its "popular trials" that sometimes included "slitting throats, strangulation, stoning, and burning."[36][37] While punishing and killing cattle thieves was popular in some parts of Peru, the Shining Path also killed peasants and popular leaders for minor offenses.[38] Peasants were offended by the rebels' injunction against burying the bodies of Shining Path victims.[39]

The Shining Path became disliked for its policy of closing small and rural markets in order to end small-scale capitalism and to starve Lima.[40][41] As a Maoist organization, it strongly opposed all forms of capitalism. It followed Mao's dictum that guerrilla warfare should start in the countryside and gradually choke off the cities. (Desarrollar la lucha armada del campo a la ciudad, San Marcos 1985 PCP speech). As the peasants' livelihoods depended on trade in the markets, they rejected such closures. In several areas of Peru, the Shining Path launched unpopular restrictive campaigns, such as a prohibition on parties[42] and the consumption of alcohol.[43]

In 1991, President Alberto Fujimori issued a law[44] that gave the rondas a legal status, and from that time they were officially called Comités de auto defensa ("Committees of Self Defence"). They were officially armed, usually with 12-gauge shotguns, and trained by the Peruvian Army. According to the government, there were approximately 7,226 comités de auto defensa as of 2005;[45] almost 4,000[citation needed] are located in the central region of Peru, the stronghold of the Shining Path.

The Peruvian government also cracked down on the Shining Path in other ways. Military personnel were dispatched to areas dominated by the Shining Path, especially Ayacucho, to fight the rebels. Ayacucho itself was declared an emergency zone, and constitutional rights were suspended in the area.[citation needed]

Initial government efforts to fight the Shining Path were not very effective or promising. Military units engaged in many human rights violations, which caused the Shining Path to appear in the eyes of many as the lesser of two evils. They used excessive force and killed many innocent civilians. Government forces destroyed villages and killed campesinos suspected of supporting the Shining Path. They eventually lessened the pace at which the armed forces committed atrocities such as massacres. Additionally, the state began the widespread use of intelligence agencies in its fight against the Shining Path. However, atrocities were committed by the National Intelligence Service and the Army Intelligence Service, notably the La Cantuta massacre and the Barrios Altos massacre, both of which were committed by Grupo Colina.[46][47]

After the collapse of the Fujimori government, interim President Valentín Paniagua established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the conflict. The Commission found in its 2003 Final Report that 69,280 people died or disappeared between 1980 and 2000 as a result of the armed conflict.[48] The Shining Path was found to be responsible for about 54% of the deaths and disappearances reported to the Commission.[49] A statistical analysis of the available data led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to estimate that the Shining Path was responsible for the death or disappearance of 31,331 people, 46% of the total deaths and disappearances.[48] According to a summary of the report by Human Rights Watch, "Shining Path… killed about half the victims, and roughly one-third died at the hands of government security forces… The commission attributed some of the other slayings to a smaller guerrilla group and local militias. The rest remain unattributed."[50] The MRTA was held responsible for 1.5% of the deaths.[51]

On September 12, 1992, Peruvian police captured Guzmán and several Shining Path leaders in an apartment above a dance studio in the Surquillo district of Lima. The police had been monitoring the apartment, as a number of suspected Shining Path militants had visited it. An inspection of the garbage of the apartment produced empty tubes of a skin cream used to treat psoriasis, a condition that Guzmán was known to have. Shortly after the raid that captured Guzmán, most of the remaining Shining Path leadership fell as well.[52]

The capture of rebel leader Abimael Guzman left a huge leadership vacuum for the Shining Path. "There is no No. 2. There is only Presidente Gonzalo and then the party," a Shining Path political officer said at a birthday celebration for Guzman in Lurigancho prison in December 1990. "Without Presidente Gonzalo, we would have nothing."[53]

At the same time, the Shining Path suffered embarrassing military defeats to self-defense organizations of rural campesinos — supposedly its social base. When Guzmán called for peace talks, the organization fractured into splinter groups, with some Shining Path members in favor of such talks and others opposed.[54] Guzmán's role as the leader of the Shining Path was taken over by Óscar Ramírez, who himself was captured by Peruvian authorities in 1999. After Ramírez's capture, the group splintered, guerrilla activity diminished sharply, and peace returned to the areas where the Shining Path had been active.[55]

Although the organization's numbers had lessened by 2003,[55] a militant faction of the Shining Path called Proseguir (or "Onward") continued to be active.[56] It is believed that the faction consists of three companies known as the North, or Pangoa, the Centre, or Pucuta, and the South, or Vizcatán. The government claims that Proseguir is operating in alliance with drug traffickers.[citation needed]

On March 21, 2002, a car bomb exploded outside the U.S. embassy in Lima just before a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush. Nine people were killed and 30 were injured; the attack was blamed on the Shining Path.[57]

On June 9, 2003, a Shining Path group attacked a camp in Ayacucho, and took 68 employees of the Argentinian company Techint and three police guards as hostages. They had been working in the Camisea gas pipeline project that would take natural gas from Cusco to Lima.[58] According to sources from Peru's Interior Ministry, the rebels asked for a sizable ransom to free the hostages. Two days later, after a rapid military response, the rebels abandoned the hostages; according to government sources no ransom was paid.[59] However, there were rumors that US$200,000 was paid to the rebels.[60]

Government forces have captured three leading Shining Path members. In April 2000, Commander José Arcela Chiroque, called "Ormeño", was captured, followed by another leader, Florentino Cerrón Cardozo, called "Marcelo" in July 2003. In November of the same year, Jaime Zuñiga, called "Cirilo" or "Dalton," was arrested after a clash in which four guerrillas were killed and an officer was wounded.[61] Officials said he took part in planning the kidnapping of the Techint pipeline workers. He was also thought to have led an ambush against an army helicopter in 1999 in which five soldiers died.

In 2003, the Peruvian National Police broke up several Shining Path training camps and captured many members and leaders.[62] It also freed about 100 indigenous people held in virtual slavery.[63] By late October 2003 there were 96 terrorist incidents in Peru, projecting a 15% decrease from the 134 kidnappings and armed attacks in 2002.[62] Also for the year, eight[63] or nine[62] people were killed by the Shining Path, and 6 senderistas were killed and 209 were captured.[62]

Comrade Artemio now captured and prosecuted, facing a lifelong term in prison

In January 2004, a man known as Comrade Artemio and identifying himself as one of the Shining Path's leaders, said in a media interview that the group would resume violent operations unless the Peruvian government granted amnesty to other top Shining Path leaders within 60 days.[64] Peru's Interior Minister, Fernando Rospigliosi, said that the government would respond "drastically and swiftly" to any violent action. In September that same year, a comprehensive sweep by police in five cities found 17 suspected members. According to the interior minister, eight of the arrested were school teachers and high-level school administrators.[65]

Despite these arrests, the Shining Path continues to exist in Peru. On December 22, 2005, the Shining Path ambushed a police patrol in the Huánuco region, killing eight.[66] Later that day they wounded an additional two police officers. In response, then President Alejandro Toledo declared a state of emergency in Huánuco, and gave the police the power to search houses and arrest suspects without a warrant. On February 19, 2006, the Peruvian police killed Héctor Aponte, believed to be the commander responsible for the ambush.[67] In December 2006, Peruvian troops were sent to counter renewed guerrilla activity and, according to high level government officials, the Shining Path's strength has reached an estimated 300 members.[68] In November 2007, police claimed to have killed Artemio's second-in-command, a guerrilla known as JL.[69]

In September 2008, government forces announced the killing of five rebels in the Vizcatan region. This claim has subsequently been challenged by the APRODEH, a Peruvian human rights group, which believes that those who were killed were in fact local farmers and not rebels.[70] That same month, Artemio gave his first recorded interview since 2006. In it he stated that the Shining Path would continue to fight despite escalating military pressure.[71] In October 2008, in Huancavelica Region, the guerrillas engaged a military convoy with explosives and firearms, demonstrating their continued ability to strike and inflict casualties on military targets. The conflict resulted in the death of 12 soldiers and two to seven civilians.[72][73] It came one day after a clash in the Vizcatan region, which left five rebels and one soldier dead.[74]

In November 2008, the rebels utilized hand grenades and automatic weapons in an assault that claimed the lives of 4 police officers.[75] In April 2009, the Shining Path ambushed and killed 13 government soldiers in Ayacucho.[76] Grenades and dynamite were used in the attack.[76] The dead included eleven soldiers and one captain and two soldiers were also injured, with one reported missing.[76]

Poor communications were said to have made relay of the news difficult.[76] The country's Defence Minister, Antero Flores Aráoz claimed many soldiers "plunged over a cliff".[76] His Prime Minister Yehude Simon said these attacks were "desperate responses by the Shining Path in the face of advances by the armed forces", and expressed his belief that the area would soon be freed of "leftover terrorists".[76] In the aftermath, a Sendero leader called this "the strongest [anti-government] blow... ...in quite a while".[77] In November 2009, Defense Minister Rafael Rey announced that Shining Path militants had attacked a military outpost in southern Ayacucho province. One soldier was killed and three others wounded in the assault.[78]

On April 28, 2010 Shining Path rebels in Peru ambushed and killed a police officer and two civilians who were destroying coca plantations of Aucayacu, in the central region of Haunuco, Peru. The victims were gunned down by sniper fire coming from the thick forest as more than 200 workers were destroying coca plants.[79] Since this attack, the Shining Path faction, based in the Upper Huallaga Valley of Peru and headed by Florindo Eleuterio Flores Hala, alias Comrade Artemio, has been operating in a survival mode, and has lost 9 of their top 10 leaders to Peruvian National Police (PNP)-led capture operations. Two of the eight leaders were killed by PNP personnel during the attempted captures. Those nine arrested/killed Shining Path (Upper Huallaga Valley faction) leaders include Mono (Aug. 2009), Rubén (May 2010), Izula (Oct. 2010), Sergio (Dec. 2010), Yoli/Miguel/Jorge (Jun. 2011), Gato Larry (Jun. 2011), Oscar Tigre (Aug. 2011), Vicente Roger (Aug. 2011) and Dante/Delta (Jan. 2012).[80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87]

This loss of leadership coupled with a sweep of Shining Path (Upper Huallaga Valley) supporters executed by the PNP in November 2010, prompted Comrade Artemio to declare in December 2011 to several international journalists that the guerrilla war against the Peruvian Government has been lost, and that his only hope was to negotiate an amnesty agreement with the Government of Peru.[88]

On 12 February 2012, Comrade Artemio was found badly wounded after a clash with troops in a remote jungle region of Peru. President Ollanta Humala said the capture of Artemio marked the defeat of the Shining Path in the Alto Huallaga valley – a centre of cocaine production. President Humala has stated that he would now step up the fight against the remaining bands of Shining Path rebels in the Ene-Apurimac valley. [89] On March 3, Walter Diaz, the lead candidate to succeed Artemio,[90] was captured,[91] further ensuring the disintegration of the Alto Huallaga valley faction.[90] On April 3, 2012, Jaime Arenas Caviedes, a senior leader in the group's remnants in Alto Huallaga Valley[92] who was also regarded to be the leading candidate to succeed Artemio following Diaz's arrest,[93] was captured.[92] After Caviedes, alias "Braulio,"[92] was captured, Humala declared that the Shining Path was now unable to operate in the Alto Huallaga Valley.[94]

On 7 October 2012, Shining Path rebels carried out an attack on three helicopters being used by an international gas pipeline consortium, in the central region of Cusco.[95] According to the military Joint Command spokesman, Col. Alejandro Lujan, no one was kidnapped or injured during the attack.[96]

On June 7, 2013, Comrade Artemio was convicted of terrorism, drug trafficking, and money laundering. He was sentenced to life in prison and a fine of $183 million.[97]

On August 11, 2013, Comrade Alipio, the Shining Path's leader in the Ene-Apurimac Valley, was killed in a battle with government forces in Llochegua.[98]

The Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights (MOVADEF) is an organization that tried to register as a lawful political party according to Peruvian law. However, its registration was denied by the Peruvian JNE.[99][100] According to the organization's own website, they are "A group of grassroots leaders, intellectuals and people artists, as well as lawyers who defend political prisoners and social outcasts, who guided to serve the people with all our hearts and with absolute disinterest, have constituted the "Movimiento Por Amnistía y Derechos Fundamentales"[101] In its own website (in Spanish) they also say, among many mottos, "¡Down with the political pursuit against communists, marxists-leninists-maoists, Gonzalo Thought and the real democrats" In their publication called "General Amnesty", they openly advocate freeing Abimael Guzmán.[citation needed]

^Burt, Jo-Marie. "The Shining Path and the Decisive Battle in Lima's Barriadas: The Case of Villa El Salvador, p 291 in Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995, ed. Steve Stern, Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1998 (ISBN 0-8223-2217-X).

^Manrique, Nelson. "The War for the Central Sierra," p. 211 in Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995, ed. Steve Stern, Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1998 (ISBN 0-8223-2217-X).

^Starn, Orin. "Villagers at Arms: War and Counterrevolution in the Central-South Andes," p. 237 in Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995, ed. Steve Stern, Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1998 (ISBN 0-8223-2217-X).